Epiphrase
figure of speech or rhetorical figure
An epiphrase (meaning "what it is said in addition", from ancient Greek ἐπί/epí "in addition" and φράσις/phrásis "phrase") is a figure of speech that consists of joining one or more sentence segments to the end of a syntactically completed sentence or group as a conclusion or to emphasize a fact.
The epiphrase can be used in two ways. It can indeed be used to add a word to an already finished speech or can allow the author to include a personal comment in their speech. Identifying it can be difficult as it is like other figures such as the epiphonema, the parenthesis, or the hyperbaton.
Its stylistic resources can be an idea or word amplification, a feeling or reflection highlighting, and the effect of distance or on the contrary of approaching the reader, with an often comic or humorous intention.
Identification
Etymology
The "epiphrase" is a neologism with two Greek roots: ἐπί/epí which means "in addition", and φράσις/phrásis which means "phrase". For the grammar professor and linguist Patrick Bacry, it is literally "what it is said in addition" (there is a related Greek verb ἐπιφράζειν/epiphrázein that means "to say furthermore") or 'added explanation". He also points out that the word "epiphrase" is "not widely used".
Definition
The Dictionnaire de la langue française by Émile Littré defines epiphrase as a figure of speech in which "one or more words are added to a phrase that seemed finished in order to develop more ideas".
According to the linguist and stylist Bernard Dupriez, the epiphrase is part of a phrase that is added specially to indicate the author or character's feelings as in this example from the novel Le Curé de Cucugnan by Alphonse Daudet:
"Tomorrow, Monday, I will confess the old men and women.
The public source identifies “Epiphrase” as figure of speech or rhetorical figure. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Epiphrase, figure and speech.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1347223. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Epiphrase” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.